DEFINITION:
The measures of the quantity of leisure time presented here are based on information drawn from national and International Time Use Surveys. Participants to these surveys fill diaries over a number of days. Information from these diaries is then aggregated into a standard activity classification, with the sum of minutes spent in various (primary) activities summing to 24 hours per day.

Time-use data from national surveys have been re-coded by the OECD to a common classification based on the five main categories of “paid work and study”; “home production”; “personal care”; “leisure activities”; and “other activities not classified elsewhere”. Adjustments have been made to account for cross-country differences in the age of people covered by the various national surveys. Finally, to account for differences across countries in time devoted to personal care, this has been set equal to the amount devoted to this activity in the country where this is lowest (Norway); the excess of daily time that residents of some countries devote to personal care has been added to leisure.